The Summer We Fell Apart

by Robin Antalek

  He was surprised that Sam had no ink or piercings either, although he was sure that it had nothing to do with a fear of needles. Sam’s skin was smooth all over, bearing only the scars from living. And George wanted to discover everything: the topography of Sam’s body in the years he’d lived on the earth before George. On Sam’s right cheekbone just below his eye there was a small indentation, a chicken-pox crater, where George placed the tip of his index finger. He imagined that if they lived forever he would never tire of running his hands over the multitude of smaller scars and bumps scattered about Sam’s body from years spent sculpting wood and metal.

  They’d ordered pizza but let it get cold, and now, because neither of them wanted to get out of bed to warm it up, they ate it straight from the box. From the way Sam had gnawed and nibbled his way across George’s body, George was pretty sure that his gaffe this morning had been forgiven and so he felt safe to tell him about Asa’s outburst after school.

  “I’m sick about it,” George said as he dropped a crust into the box. “I don’t want Asa to be upset.”

  Sam sat up and looked hard at George. “I swear to you, I had no idea that he knew you spent the night.”

  “You don’t know the things that went through my mind all day. Were we loud? Had he heard us?”

  Sam reached out and ran his hand along George’s jaw. “Oh, baby. I am so sorry. Asa is a teenager, you know? I mean, how do you think he’s going to react to anyone I bring into our family?” He leaned over and pressed his lips against George’s and whispered, “I’ll talk to him.”

  George moved back away from Sam. He was torn between asking how many men Sam had attempted to bring into their family before George, and worrying that talking to Asa would only make it worse. Finally, he asked, “Do you think you should?”

  “Asa and I have always been open with each other.”

  “So he knew we went out last night? That we’ve been out before?”

  “He knew I thought you were cute.”

  “You’re not answering my question, Sam. Please. This is tricky, you know? There’s my job and…” George trailed off, momentarily distracted by Sam’s hand stroking high up on his inner thigh. He put his hand over Sam’s to let him know he didn’t want him to remove his hand but he also wanted Sam to listen to what he was saying. “I don’t do anything lightly. You might need to know that about me.”

  “Really?” Sam said teasingly. “And all along I thought you were some good-time party boy.”

  “I thought Asa liked me,” George said morosely.

  “He does, you moron. Why else would he be so angry?”

  “Really?” George asked as he released Sam’s hand, allowing it the freedom to continue stroking his thigh. “Do you really think so?” George murmured as Sam pushed him back against the pillows. He closed his eyes and reached for Sam. He hoped Sam was right. Ever since his father died a few months ago, George had been unable to shake his fear of dying alone. He wanted a life with someone that had meaning, more than just a body to hold on to. Was he irrational to think that person could be Sam? Or Sam and Asa?

  “Hey.” George struggled to get Sam’s attention away from his nipples. Between his hand and his mouth, George knew he didn’t have long before he was totally gone. “Sam, hey,” he said again and tugged on Sam’s hair to stop him from doing the incredible thing with his tongue and look up.

  Sam obeyed with a slow, lazy smile. George brushed the hair out of Sam’s face and said, “You never told me why you were out on the Island.”

  “Last month, I sold three paintings to this guy and his wife and they invited me out for drinks. She writes cookbooks and he works in finance.” He smirked. “The husband is totally in denial. You should have seen him. I thought he was going to soil his fancy suit right there as he looked at the paintings. Why else would he want life-size male nudes hanging in his living room?”

  “Maybe they were for his wife?”

  Sam cocked his head to the side as though he was listening for something. “No, I got the distinct impression they were for him, you know, his choice?”

  George imagined all sorts of scenarios where an elegantly suited Wall Street guy made his sexual intentions known to George’s brand-new lover. Sam must have realized what George was thinking because all of a sudden he sat up and said, “When I met you that day in the restaurant,” he stopped and shook his head and corrected himself. “When I saw you peering at me through the window in the gallery, you made my insides turn to mush. I haven’t felt like that in years. Maybe ever.” He stroked George’s cheek and hovered over him, staring down into his face. “I had no idea you would ever feel the same way about me. Do you believe me?”

  George nodded, speechless, his throat dry.

  “But, baby,” Sam continued, “I wish you had been with me to see this house, right on the Sound: with all this private shoreline to themselves. The dark water moving beneath the moonlight; the sand looked silver and the leaves are off the trees and everything was stripped bare, winter-bare—it was practically mystical, you know? The entire back of the house was glass and I couldn’t tear myself away from it. I couldn’t stop staring the entire time I was there and I don’t even think either of them glanced outside, not even once. It was so goddamned beautiful.”

  “You’re just like Gatsby,” George whispered.

  “No.” Sam shook his head, his mouth twisted wryly. “Gatsby was seduced by it all. I’m too much of a realist.”

  “So I’m the romantic here?”

  “You can be anything you want as long as you stop talking, okay?” Sam asked, seeming to enjoy his role as aggressor as he lowered his body back down onto George’s. “Okay?” he asked as his eyelashes brushed against George’s cheek. “Okay?” he asked a final time, although George knew he really wasn’t looking for an answer.

  George proposed lunch with Asa and then a trip through the shop Lonely Planet, but Sam nixed the idea.

  “You don’t have to try that hard, George. I mean it,” Sam said by a billboard advocating safe sex on the side of a building on Third Avenue. It was a giant hand in front of a gently bulging button-fly crotch, holding out a condom. Just beneath was the message: COVER UP.

  “What is the purpose of that?” Sam asked, pointing and shaking his head. “I mean, really, you want to bone someone you want to bone them. When you’re all in, who’s going to pull out and say, hold on a sec, I saw this thing over on Third that said I need a rubber.” He shook his head again.

  “That’s the point, Sam. It’s supposed to make you think before you’re all in,” George said more sarcastically than he intended. He was just frustrated. It had been a month since he and Sam had first slept together and he refused to return to Sam’s place until the situation with Asa was dealt with. That meant that a pattern had been established where Sam showed up at George’s late, usually after Asa had gone to bed and George was half-dead from a day of teaching. They would spend a few minutes talking about the day as they removed their clothing and fell on each other like animals. Afterward they dozed and then Sam would rouse himself around four to make it back to his place so he’d be home to wake Asa for school. George hadn’t had a full night’s sleep in forever and that was probably adding to his increasingly short temper.

  “Waste of space,” Sam muttered as he continued down the street.

  George sighed. Of course Sam was right about most things. He was probably right about the effectiveness of the billboard. Ever vigilant, and despite all the safe-sex warnings George had ever seen or heard in his life, he and Sam had not been using any protection since that very first time and he passed by this bulletin board almost every day.

  He sighed again, loudly. Sam said the best thing to do was to give Asa space to sort everything out and that George was actually making it worse by hiding. Naturally, George didn’t think he was hiding from Asa, after all he was his English teacher and he saw him every single day in school. He didn’t feel like backing down on this one and so he argued
with Sam all the way down to the Bowery. It was the first time that they had really disagreed, and George hated that it had to be about Asa. Was he making more of this than he should? Obviously, he didn’t think so or he would have stopped. He wasn’t unreasonable.

  Sam hesitated in front of a wall of graffiti. A giant painting of a baby suckling at the teat of a beast had been wheat-pasted over a thick quilt of old flyers and caught Sam’s eye. He lifted his camera from around his neck and snapped a few frames. “There’s really some interesting stuff out here,” he called as he walked ahead of George and ran a hand along the wall.

  It was the first time they had been together during the daylight hours in a while. Asa was hanging with friends and Sam had suggested George come along with him for a walk so that he could photograph graffiti. He had been playing with ideas for some new paintings incorporating street art and he was gathering inspiration material. George was ashamed that he had instigated the bickering when he and Sam had so little time to spend together. But he couldn’t stop. When he had things on his mind, he needed to say them. Sam refusing to see George’s point made it all the worse.

  George hung back and studied Sam’s retreating form. His thick, inky hair was loose from its usual elastic band and hit the shoulders of his bomber jacket, the strong thighs and nearly nonexistent ass hidden in baggy jeans, the way he bounced lightly on the balls of his feet as he walked. Tears sprung to George’s eyes at the thought of not having Sam in his life, and he quickly wiped them away before he became just another sad, odd queer caught crying on the street. Just as he thought Sam was about to turn the corner without him, he stopped and looked back over his shoulder. George managed a tremulous smile.

  Sam extended the hand not holding the camera. “Hey, baby. Are you coming? Are you all right?” He took several steps back toward George, a deep V between his brows. “George?”

  George inhaled deeply and smiled. “I do know a few things about teenagers, you know? I mean I’m not a parent but I’ve been a teacher for a while. I’m not just phoning it in with them.” He couldn’t resist one more attempt, one last stab at credibility where Asa was concerned. “Maybe he’s waiting for you or us to talk to him about it. Maybe he just feels out of the loop?”

  He caught Sam’s darkening expression and steeled himself for what would come next. Instead, Sam said softly, “You are the most brilliant half of the two of us, George. I’ve never said otherwise. But I know Asa and you just have to trust me on this one. Please.” Sam added in a pleading tone although his eyes looked anything but unsure, “Please?”

  Reluctantly, George found himself silenced and nodding in agreement as he followed Sam around the corner.

  Asa’s Gatsby paper was less than stellar. As a matter of fact, it was as close to a failing grade as Asa had ever received. George sat at his desk, tapping his pen against the edge as he waited for Asa to show. He wasn’t so sure he would, despite George’s scrawl along the top of his paper: See me, in bright red ink.

  All of George’s students knew that see me meant to come during sixth period office hours. George got up and checked his watch against the clock on the wall outside the door. Asa had ten more minutes to show.

  With less than four minutes before the bell signaled the next class, Asa shuffled into George’s office, dropped a pile of books onto the floor, and threw himself against the seat of the chair opposite the desk.

  George smiled quickly and said, “Asa.”

  Asa looked out the window past George and said nothing in return.

  George coughed, fumbled, and dropped his pen. Asa looked down at the floor where the pen had rolled, but neither of them made a move to pick it up.

  “Soooo, Gatsby. What gives? You read the book, right?”

  Lazily, Asa held up one hand with the fingers splayed. George took that to mean he had read it five times.

  “And you just didn’t feel like writing about it?” He paused, knowing what he said next would light a fire under Asa. “Or you just had trouble comprehending? Fitzgerald may seem like an accessible author in terms of language, but the themes are fairly mature.”

  Asa snorted. “Maybe I should have written the paper from an immigrant’s perspective? You know, the urge to conform. Not to appear foreign but to be American.” He spit out the last word like it was an obscenity and shrugged his shoulders. “Gatsby just wanted to fit in, right?”

  “Maybe you should have,” George agreed. “How about this: you go home tonight and write that paper and turn it in to me tomorrow and I’ll consider not marking you off for the first paper?”

  “Am I getting special treatment?”

  George felt his face redden. “No.”

  “Really? ’Cause I thought where papers are concerned there were no do-overs with you.”

  George fought to keep his voice steady. “In the case where a student obviously misinterpreted the assignment, I make exceptions. It seems like perhaps your ideas weren’t fully formed the first time.”

  “Or maybe it’s just because I stay awake half the night wondering where my dad is and if he will be coming home.” To demonstrate his loss of sleep, he yawned loudly, dramatically stretching his long arms far above his head. “Sometimes I have a hard time concentrating on a little amount of sleep.”

  The bell rang for the next class. George watched Asa scoop the books off the floor and saunter out of his office without looking back. In that moment, he was more like Sam than George ever realized. He wondered if Asa would share their conversation with Sam. George had no intention of doing so unless Asa refused to turn in the revised paper. Then he would have to take on the role of concerned teacher. Concerned teacher who just happened to have woken up this morning at half past three curled up in the arms of the student’s father.

  George was astounded when he walked into his office in the morning and dead-center on his desk was a ten-page double-spaced typed paper titled The Great Gatsby: An Immigrant’s Perspective.

  He sat down and rifled through the pages as he sipped his coffee but he was unable to focus. He was beyond exhausted yet again. After Sam left, George had dozed on and off, unable to fully commit to sleep. The little time they’d spent together was unsatisfying: Sam was preoccupied after working eight long hours in his studio, which made any attempt at meaningful conversation obsolete, and he was also in pain, with aching joints and muscles, from building frames and stretching large canvases. It was the first time that neither of them could muster the energy for sex, yet George insisted on working the knots out of Sam’s back and legs and arms with his hands. Then, when Sam had fallen asleep, George had stayed awake, watching him. At three he’d woken him up with a kiss and sent him home to Asa.

  Instead of the regular class periods today they had an assembly over in the girls’ building. It was rare that they brought the schools together during the course of a normal school day, so the halls were buzzing with testosterone. There were minor skirmishes at the lockers and an additional layer of deodorant and cologne over the normal musky odor that naturally permeated the boys’ building. These guys were ruled by one thing and one thing only, and they would take whatever opportunity they had to make an impression on the opposite sex, no matter how insignificant.

  Being one of the younger teachers meant that George always pulled chaperone detail. After everyone had been herded into place and safely deposited in seats in their assigned rows, George took a spot along the back wall, tucked beneath the shadow of the staircase to the balcony. The balcony was closed off to the boys, and George’s standing there made it look as though he were guarding the entrance when in reality there was enough darkness that he could get away with catnapping while the speakers from the association of Ivy Leagues extolled the virtues of their alma maters. As if these kids needed to know something that had been ingrained since infancy.

  At the end of the day, he was in his office clearing off his desk, determined to catch a swim in the lap pool before he headed home. George used the water as a sedative all throu
gh high school and college and so far continuing into adulthood. As far as he was concerned, it was better than therapy. He was just about to leave when Asa appeared in his doorway.

  “Hey,” he said as a greeting, his long body wedged against the molding.

  George motioned for him to come and take a seat but Asa refused. George shrugged and continued stuffing papers into his bag.

  “You got my Gatsby paper?” Asa asked.

  George nodded. He was surprised to hear the lack of a challenge in Asa’s voice. “I haven’t read it yet,” he said, then added, “By the end of the week, okay?”

  “Sure,” Asa answered.

  As he began to turn away, George heard himself ask Asa if he wanted to meet his mother. She was in the city, hawking the video release of Dead, Again 3, and since Asa was a fan, he thought he might be able to set something up.

  Too late to rescind the offer, he watched Asa’s face revert from that of a bored, uninterested teenager to that of a six-year-old kid on Christmas morning, and George knew without a doubt that Sam was going to kill him for going behind his back. Was bribery an acceptable form of parenting? He doubted Sam would agree.

  That afternoon, he swam fifty laps at the Y pool and stayed extra long under the hot shower. On the way home, he stopped and picked up a few essential groceries and then made himself a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup for dinner.